The Peacock Hotel

What follows is a truncated early draft of Chapter 1.

The first day of the first excursion started early, on the Tuesday following a May bank holiday. To make matters even less convenient, it was raining and I was in Swindon. By lunchtime I was expected by Jon and a friend of his in one of Derbyshire’s oldest fishing inns, the Peacock Hotel at Rowsley. A well-organised Victorian would no doubt have shown greater powers of anticipation and journeyed the night before, but modern bank holiday ticket prices dictated otherwise – no Privilege Ticket for me, or anyone else for that matter. Nevertheless, on Platform 3 at a little after 6.30 a.m., I was a sure as I could be that the day would only get better.

The first train took me as far as Cheltenham Spa, where there was to be a 40-minute wait. I was keen to absorb the best that culture could offer in such a short stop, and so followed the signs outside the station to Rick’s Café, on an industrial estate behind the old Midland Hotel – once a stopping point for weary rail travellers, but now a pub boasting Live TV Football and a Games Room. Rick’s takeaway sausage bap and coffee was as exquisite as one could expect for £2.10, and perhaps even a little better than that. Its peptic side effects were still with me two hours later, when my second train of the day pulled in at Derby.

At this point, it occurred to me that I’d taken a circuitous angular route thus far, that I’d spent twice as much on tickets as I would have done on petrol for the car, and that the Victorians were indeed fortunate to have had access to an emerging, ambitious programme of public transport. It was barely noon, and already I’d crossed rivers as diverse as the Bristol Avon, the Severn, the Warwickshire Avon, the Dove and the Trent. I’d fished all of them in the past, usually for barbel and pike, and always with the comfort of a car to take me there. The perspective from a train’s carriage felt somehow different, though at this point in the adventure it was too early to articulate what that difference was.

It did occur to me - with far greater clarity - that it was still raining. I bought a rejuvenating coffee from a machine on the platform at Derby, but it tasted like floodwater. No matter – there were clearer skies in the North West, and the prospect of wild trout began to grip.

A third, brief journey took me as far as Matlock, and it was here that the carefully-planned first day began to unravel. The intention had been to dash from Matlock Station over the road to a private steam railway running alongside the Derwent, and make my dramatic entrance to Rowsley on Peak Rails’ WD150 Royal Pioneer – a proper, puffing behemoth boasting an Austerity 0-6-0 wheelbase and saddle tank design, according to the guidebooks.

Sadly, there appears to be something of a schism between BR at Matlock station and the enthusiasts trying to revive the old Derwent Line. The former were less than helpful in offering directions to the latter, and I missed the Royal Pioneer by a matter of minutes. A handwritten sign at Matlock Station made it abundantly clear that they had nothing to do with the steam service located ‘over the road opposite Sainsbury’s’. These directions were not as precise as I required, and a less charitable soul might regard them as wilfully inaccurate too. A ten-minute jog along the dual carriageway (complete with rucksack, trout rod and net) finally brought me to the riverside station, but by then the Royal Pioneer was building up its head of steam half a mile away. My eventual arrival in Rowsley – sat in the ‘pushchairs only’ section of a Transpeak bus, next to a hyper-ventilating old boy who wanted to know whether I’d ever caught ‘any of them babelfish below that bridge at Matlock’ – was less than momentous.

It was, of course, still raining when I walked in to the Peacock Hotel and met Jon and Richard. Both had steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, and were busily playing with cameras and looking at the photographs they’d just taken of the Royal Pioneer. I was desperate for some lunch, and perhaps a beer. Apparently, neither was possible; we were going fishing.

We made a brief detour to Richard’s house on the way. I liked him immediately – fifty-something, obsessed with trout fishing, a former racer of very fast cars, and with the kind of subtly outrageous humour that could offend if you were really paying attention – he was clearly a chap with his priorities in the right order. The river ran along bottom of his garden, and at least one room in the house had been consumed by old and rare fishing books.

The Peacock Hotel water on the Derbyshire Wye has been a historic trout fishery since the early 1800s. The river itself, which encompasses 7 ½ miles of the Wye and shorter stretches of its two tributaries, the Lathkill and Bradford, has been part of the Haddon Estate for some 800 years. Day tickets have been available from the Peacock Hotel or directly from the estate since 1820, and the fishery has been dry-fly only since 1865. The current Head River Keeper, Warren Slaney, practices a policy of wild fish only; no trout or eggs have been introduced to the river since 2003, and my hosts assured me that the browns were of outstanding quality. The Wye is unique in that it is the only English river where rainbow trout thrive naturally. Of course, they were deliberately introduced at one time, but this stocking ceased years ago and since then they have bred successfully, and now live alongside the browns and grayling. If I caught one, Richard told me, it would be unlike any triploid stockie I’d ever encountered.

The water available to us that afternoon amounted to three furlongs of wonderful trout stream. Richard, a regular rod there, walked us along the entire beat, pointing out likely lies and the scenes of past triumphs and calamities. Everywhere, the effort of the river keeper to maintain a rich habitat for trout and other creatures was wonderfully apparent. Large numbers of wild fish rose in the clear, ranunculus-rich water; the air fizzed with blue-winged olives, green drakes and a few black gnats. I didn’t think we could fail to catch trout.

Richard advised that we tackle up long leaders – 12ft or more – with 5lb points. It was up to us whether we chose to match the olives or the drakes. The riffles that were a feature of every pool made drift and drag a problem, but a good cast and mend stood a chance of receiving some attention. My first cast fell short, but my second and third both elicited confident takes. I missed both. Richard and Jon, who had yet to tackle up, were highly amused.

Missed takes became a feature of the day; these were canny, educated trout. In 1882, Manchester angler George Sumner described the Rowsley trout thus:

They are thoroughly acquainted with the curious vagaries of an artificial fly injudiciously handled, and they require careful humouring and careful stalking.

Old George was right, and it became clear that the trout had done little to lose their fickle reputation in the subsequent one hundred-and-twenty years. Many of the takes came short, the trout inspecting without taking.

That said, we were on a well-populated trout stream towards the end of May, with two hatches occurring simultaneously. We caught trout. Richard landed the first, and biggest, on a modified Kite’s Imperial. It was a heavily-spotted brown with a distinctive coral edge to its fins and bright red spots towards its tail and on the tip of its adipose. We didn’t weight it, but it was probably over two pounds.

Soon afterwards, I lost one and landed my first. It was a rainbow, perhaps half the size of Richard’s brownie, and resembled nothing I’d ever caught from stocked stillwaters. The depth of its colours, the larger fully-formed fins, the wily aggression and wild demeanour all impressed. I wanted another, and shortly afterwards my wish was granted. Jon, meanwhile, was hooking his share. I had no idea whether the day would provide Jon with the kind of material he sought for the book, but I could tell he was having fun.

Bankside tea and cakes galvanised us as the sun dropped low and the drizzle returned, and in the final hour I managed to hook and hang on to one of the brown trout, using Richard’s cane rod. It took a locally-tied green drake, swallowing it confidently in a momentary whirlpool, and zipping upstream and down for a minute before surrendering to the net. We admired it briefly, marvelling once more at the red spots and coral-tipped fins. The urge to stay longer was overwhelming, but there was a schedule of sorts to keep to, and supper waiting in Shropshire. More importantly, there was a flooded valley, more trout and a few Welsh ghosts to visit the following day.